


to sing a song of sorrow

by nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)



Series: me sobbing about critical role [89]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artistic Liberties, Backstory, Class Swap!, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Implied Classissm, Implied Mental Breakdown, Music, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, briefly edited, poorly translated german folk songs, what if caleb was a bard tho?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 07:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18773641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife
Summary: Una Ermendrud sings her songs to her son, and to Bren it is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard.





	to sing a song of sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> guess who has a lot of headcanons about caleb's past. ha. also i am so sorry if you speak german. i tried?

Bren is seven, and is lying on a threadbare bed, sick with fever. Above him, his Mama strokes his hair, and begins to sing. Her voice is a little scratchy, her pitch a little low; not perfect by any measure. She sings the tale every child in Blumenthal knows, the one that is sung in small rooms on dark nights, in a language the Empire deems ‘backwater’.

Una Ermendrud sings her songs to her son, and to Bren it is the most beautiful sound he has ever heard.

* * *

 

Bren is nine, and by far the best singer in Blumenthal, though if you were to tell him this, he would vehemently insist that his Mama is far better than him. He sings any and every song he can make his elders tell him, that he can scrounge up in dusty corners of the small (too small, for Bren’s tastes) local library and when those bore him, he makes up his own. Silly little things, made to stave the boredom away, but precious to him all the same.

On the days he isn’t in the fields with Papa, learning their trade, he goes to Frau Minnie’s house, where all the little children stay. Usually, all the adults are working during the day, so Frau takes up the duty of caretaker during the workday; Frau Minnie is too old to work in the fields, (but no one tells her that, lest she take up the challenge.)

Bren is technically old enough to wander around the town on his own, but he likes being with the littler ones. He likes teaching them Common, and maths, and other things, but most importantly, he loves singing to them. Every time he walks up the path to Frau Minnie’s house, he sees little faces pushed up against the windows, and he is tackled to the ground when he enters.

They clamor for songs, and draw lots of hay to see who gets to request a song first. (“Bren knows so many songs! I bet he knows every song in the whole _world_!”)

And then, Bren sings, all day, until his voice begins to go rusty. The children are all sad when he stops, but they know if he keeps going, he’ll lose his voice, and then they don’t get songs for a whole _week_ while he rests!

* * *

 

Bren is ten, and his mother gives him a precious gift- a fiddle. Carved roughly from the dogwood trees that pepper their town, paid for after months and months of saving- it is the most perfect thing Bren has ever seen, and he cries as he thanks his parents.

He spends hours and hours in the woods by his home, sitting on a log and practicing, until he has every note memorized, until the movements are near entirely muscle memory.

* * *

 

Bren is thirteen, and though the fiddle is not quite forgotten, he has a new infatuation- _magic_. Bren longs to cast the spells written in the ratty spellbook that had fallen from the merchant’s cart. He wants to understand the complicated symbols and sigils that cover the pages.

Bren studies and studies, until he can create a small flame in the palm of his hand. It is such a small feat, a cantrip, but it means no more freezing nights, when the logs will not light, and it only strengthens Bren’s resolve. He _will_ learn magic.

(Later, he learns about the Soltryce Academy. Learns of a school large beyond imagining, filled with students just like him, burning to _learn_.

His town will scrimp and scrape and save until he is presented with the money, his one and only chance to be _more_. He will not disappoint them.)

* * *

 

Bren goes to Rexxentrum, and leaves behind the music of his youth. This is the Soltryce academy, the heart of the empire, and Bren has been chosen to study under an _archmage_. There is no time here for backwater songs and silly legends.

~~If he sometimes lays in bed, arms aching and burning, longing for the soothing voice of his Mama, for the tales of his youth? That is nothing but sentimentality, useless and weak, and he buries the thoughts.~~

* * *

 

Bren feels the fire leave his hand, feel the certainty burn within him, the satisfaction of _traitors no more_ , and smiles, until he hears the screams. Agonized, discordant, they creep into his mind like fractures to bone, like sour notes made by shaking, unsure hands, and he does not realize for a long, long, time that his parents’ are not the only screams he hears.

Bren is dragged to the asylum, limp, throat bloody and voice silent.

* * *

 

Bren wakes up, and the memories come crashing down, and _everything_ comes crashing down, and he is not Bren, he is Peter, Stefan, Dieter, Andreas. _Not_ Bren.

He starts to sleep less in towns but in the woods, and one day, forty-five days and three hours after he woke up, (alone, in a blindingly sterile room, a woman standing over him-,) he is sprawled at the foot of a very large tree. He has not eaten in longer than is probably healthy, and his head feels full of cotton, and a memory floats up through the fog.

Of being young, feverish, lying on a bed covered in scratchy wool blankets, his mother singing her songs to him. And for some reason, Bren starts to sing them to himself. The words are unfamiliar in his mouth after so long, but he sings them anyway, and he doesn’t realize he is crying until the song is finished and there are several globules of light dancing around his head.

Bren, later, when he has eaten (not enough to feel full, but enough) and is in his right(er) mind, will understand that he has performed bardic magic. He will decide to keep doing it, and to push the wizardry he’d learned at the lands of- _him_ away.

Away, deep into the recesses of his mind. This magic is, free, wilder than he is used to. Untainted by blood and ash and patriotism unfettered. Bren lets himself sink into the songs of his youth, and revels in the magic, in the harmonies that swirl around him like a cool breeze on a too-warm day.

(He can’t bring himself to throw his spellbook away, however. He looks at it and remembers his parents’ encouraging smiles, remembers winter nights made bearable by a simple cantrip, _remembers_ -

So he wraps it in a cloth, and hides it in very bottom of his ratty satchel, and pushes it from his mind, like so many other things.)

* * *

 

Nott and Caleb run from the prison, the loud, echoing boom still ringing in their ears. Awhile later, after they’ve bedded down in a makeshift to the extreme camp, deep in the woods, Nott turns to him, wonder in her yellow eyes, and asks, “What _was_ that? I’ve never seen anything like it!”

* * *

 

Nott and Caleb are slumped in the inn, and he freezes as Nott starts coughing and doesn’t stop.

“Nott?” he asks, the quaver not as gone from his voice as he would prefer.

She smiles, and gives him a shaky thumbs up, but now that they are no longer being attacked by gnolls, now that the adrenaline from the fight has worn off, and he is _looking_ , he sees the rips in her clothing, the red that is becoming rapidly visible.

“Nott! You are hurt! Let me see, let me see, come here,” he mutters, moving to her side, trying to ignore the faint shaking of his hands.

He rests them over the wound, and begins to hum under his breath.

* * *

 

“Do you know what i am really missing right now?” Caleb pants from his hiding place behind an especially thick oak tree.

“What?” Nott replies, perhaps a little snippily, attention focused on the last of the three wolves that had been running roughshod over their camp, shoulders tense.

“A fiddle,” he says, before peeking his head out from the tree just enough to get a line of sight; then he opens his mouth.

 _“♫Sie sind gewandert hin und her / Sie haben gehabt weder Glück noch Stern / Sie sind gestorben, verdorben_!♫”

A great wave of thunder follows the wave of his hand, and the wolf is launched back, shrieking in even more pain when several bolts hit it in succession.

* * *

 

Several weeks have passed since their encounter with the wolves, and while Caleb hasn’t forgotten his mention of his fiddle (Caleb doesn’t forget _anything_ ) it certainly isn’t the first thing on his mind. Mostly, he is calculating whether or not they should leave today, or try their hand at a few more cons before they flee this town.

He knows Nott is out, likely scratching the itch, and while he feels twitchy without her by his side, she is her own person, and more than capable of fending for herself.

He is curled up on the bed, books and paper spread out before him in a (poor) attempt at distraction, when she enters. His eyes are drawn immediately to the messily wrapped package in her hands.

“Nott? What have you acquired, my friend?”

She shifts on her feet, before speaking. “Well, I- I wanted to do something nice for you, you’re always saving me, protecting me, keeping me safe,” he opens his mouth to protest- if anything, she has saved him many more times than he has her, but she barrels on, “and I know you love your music, and you mentioned the other day how much you missed your fiddle. And, well, it took a while trying to _find_ one, let alone steal it, but, uh. Here you go?”

Caleb takes the package gingerly. He unwraps it, placing the paper to his side- never know what you may need for later- and pulls the instrument out. Nott has started speaking again, he can tell she’s nervous by all the rambling, “...and I know it isn’t the best quality, it’s a little scraped up, sorry about that, but-,”

She is stopped when Caleb reaches out and pulls her into his arms, careful to keep the strings clear. When he speaks, his voice is wet.

“ _Danke_ , _schatz_ ,” he clears his throat, “Nott, this is- it is a thoughtful gift, _thank you_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Es fiel ein Reif in der Frühlingsnacht / There fell a frost one night in spring  
> They wandered to and fro / Sie sind gewandert hin und her  
> They had neither luck nor guiding star / Sie haben gehabt weder Glück noch Stern  
> They perished, died / Sie sind gestorben, verdorben


End file.
